I have been home in Ghana (full disclosure) since July, 2015 to carry out fieldwork for my dissertation and work on my research assistantship which is funding me for the next few years till I complete and defend my dissertation hopefully in May, 2017 (GOD let it be so!) For my research assistantship I am affiliated with the DECCMA project which seeks to assess vulnerability to climate change and migration and adaptation in 3 deltas in Ghana, India and Bangladesh. DECCMA is one of 4 consortium research projects under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) funded by IDRC and DFID. My specific activities with DECCMA are contributing to the activities of the Migration and Adaptation work packages.

Between July 24 and 28, 2015 I spent my time attending the 3rd Whole-Consortium Workshop of the DECCMA project at the University of Ghana, Legon. It was quite a steep learning curve for me the first few days in trying to come up to speed with a project I had only followed from afar. One thing that stood out to me in my furious note taking and incessant picture snapping was that there was a lot of talk of “keeping things consistent across the three deltas.” That bugged me-and it kind of still does. For one who is gung-ho about context-specific and localized interpretive research I just had mental images of layers of rich, high-resolution, nuanced and complex information being glossed over for consistency or comparability. The horror!

Kwame with a cross-section of the Migration Work Page at the 3rd DECCMA Consortium Workshop

My own dissertation research, which seeks to evaluate the success or otherwise of sea defense systems (SDS) as an adaptation to climate change from the perspective of different stakeholders, currently has the presence of a SDS in a particular area of the Volta River Delta of Ghana as the singular variable to include any site in the comparative analysis. Even within one area (the Keta Municipality) I discovered the presence of two SDSes so now I am juggling whether to compare three as opposed to two. Why can’t the object of a delta be enough of a variable of similarity for large consortium-based comparative work such as DECCMA? Granted, in my own research I am borrowing from the LIG approach as research design and method-however even after only 1 full week of fieldwork I am realizing that I will need to tweak my questions based on this approach from person to person let alone between sites.

Kwame interviewing a Chief Fisherman in one of the communities along the Keta Sea Defense System

Please do not hear me damming the work of DECCMA. Far be it from me! I am so honored and proud to be part of such a large interdisciplinary and groundbreaking project. However I look forward to seeing, as I engage in my own research and contribute to that of DECCMA, how comparative research can still remain context specific and locally relevant yet not lose its validity of rigor in the eyes of the rest of the scientific community. I guess “rigor” depends on who is assessing – but that is a thought for another blog post.

Editors note 1: This whole post is one giant spoiler alert related to Season 1 of Game of Thrones. Read no further if you intend to and have yet to watch.

Ned Stark, the Environmental Sector, and the Great Pause

This has been a heavy news cycle for climate change. The President addressed it head on in the State of the Union; there were a number of (slightly befuddling) votes in the Senate about the existence/drivers of climate change;the seemingly interminable battle over Keystone XL is reaching its climax; and it was recently announced that 2014 was the hottest year on record. The latter disproves the so-called ‘Great Pause,’ a common (though specious) argument made by climate change deniers/skeptics. Strikingly, the discourse surrounding 2014-as-a-record seemed, at times, to toe the line of celebratory. As if this was the last data point needed to assuage climate deniers’ concerns and move all of us towards collectively addressing climate change. Which, naturally, brings me to the subject of this post, season 1 of Game of Thrones.

After intense negotiation, my girlfriend and I recently agreed to commit to watch Game of Thrones. It’s well-liked, multiple seasons are available, and I have my friend’s HBO GO password (check, check, and check!). We both liked it… But one event, one predictable, inevitable event, really sullied it for me: the beheading of Ned Stark. My severe chaffing over his death was equally comprised of an attachment to the only honorable man in Kings Landing, and an unshakable sense of symmetry between Ned and the modern-day environmental movement. I am not lionizing Ned nor the sector of which I am a part – but at their core both are well-intentioned, principled, and let’s face it, naïve.

There is no better metaphor for the climate change discourse in the US than Cersei’s response to Ned after he hands her the note from King Robert Baratheon, which makes Ned Protector of the Realm, and thereby removes Joffrey from power. Coldly, Cersei tears it up and asks, “Is this meant to be your shield Lord Stark, a piece of paper?” Or, to put it in terms of climate change, “Is this meant to be your argument, environmental community? Peer-reviewed literature and comprehensive reviews by thousands of climatologists?” Did we, and do we still, think data will overcome ideology? Basically, we just offered our Cersei yet another piece of paper, and they responded, as we should have expected, by voting in force that climate change is not anthropogenic (but that it does exist). Indeed, the IPCC’s fifth assessment may still be scattered about the Senate floor. As a slight aside, kudos to Senator Lindsey Graham of HURDL’s home state of South Carolina for being one of the few Republicans who didn’t toe the party line and instead voted consciously.

The Great Pause is at best a fallacious argument – motivated reasoning at its worst and most deceptive. Proving that the Great Pause is over is no more a reason to celebrate than being stuck in traffic, late for a flight, because your friend didn’t take your advice about the [insert many expletives] Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

Over on Open the Echo Chamber, I look at who might succeed Raj Shah at USAID and what is at stake. What I would like to see:

At least from an incrementalist perspective, entrenching and building on…USAID Forward would be a major accomplishment for Shah’s successor. Whoever comes next will not simply run out the clock of the Obama Administration – there are two years left. I therefore expect the administration to appoint an administrator (rather than promote a career USAID staff caretaker with no political mandate) to the position. In a perfect world, this would be a person who understands development as a discipline, but also has the government and implementing experience to understand how development thought intersects with development practice in the real world.

The big problem? I’m not sure how many of these people exist, and if they are being considered…

As West African nations are grappling with the Ebola Hemorrhagic fever (EVD) outbreak declared in March 2014, and said by Thomas Frieden, Director of the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be “unlike anything since the emergence of HIV/AIDS” and, “the largest and most complex outbreak since the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976”according to the Word Health Organization. Concerns are growing about the possible spread of the disease throughout the African continent. While it is essential to take stock of the disease itself, its origin, its mode of transmission, symptoms and treatment, it is also important to focus on the dramatic impact of EVD on agriculture and food production in the affected region of West Africa.

In the countries most affected by the current outbreak (Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Now Mali), first cases were recorded primarily in cities and rural areas. These countries have fragile political and economic structures, as they have recently experienced severe civil conflict and are ranked among the poorest countries in the world. In early September 2014, the UNFAO issued a special alert about the agricultural and food production situation in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The agency was concerned that the scale of transmission of the Ebola virus and the emergency measures taken by local government in both affected and non affected countries in the West Africa region, (establishing quarantine areas and restriction on movement of people) could have a negative impact on crop production for staple crops such as rice, millet and maize that were scheduled to be harvested in October and November. The epidemic has hit West Africa in waves. In certain localities the EVD outbreak was declared in June, a period during which farmers should plant rice. In some instances farmers started planting several weeks late. As most of crops in this region are rain fed, there is no doubt that crops will be affected. Additionally, farming work is a collective activity executed by different members of a household using all available manpower for cultivating, planting weeding or harvesting, but this has not been the case this year due to the fear of spreading the disease. Farmers are afraid to work in groups. In this region there is high demand for agricultural manpower during the harvest and post-harvest season, and restriction on population movements will result in a shortage of agricultural labor. This has forced farmers to abandon their fields and their food stocks in areas where there is high incidence of infection, while agricultural workers can no longer travel to seek casual jobs because of fears of spreading the disease. Moreover, even if the crop harvest can take place, the spread of the disease also affects the marketing of agricultural products, as the movement of traders in rural areas is also limited.

What is the impact of Ebola on food security of the affected countries?

The price of certain staple foods has started to spike in the affected countries. This is caused by the emergency measures taken by the governments of neighboring countries and foreign states enforcing the closure of land borders with affected countries, the suspension of flights to these countries, and limiting food imports from these countries. All of these measures have contributed to greatly reducing cross-border trade, and have disrupted the internal movement of food. Among government actions that impact the price of food, the ban on consumption of ” bush meat ” should also be mentioned. The third factor influencing the increase in food prices has been the consumer panic, which has caused the bulk buying of food that has caused shortage. The picture painted above shows that millions of people in countries hit by EDV could be affected by food insecurity, and that emergency food assistance is urgently needed. While we focus on delivering relief/emergency food assistance in affected area, which is a noble way to express compassion and to show the best of our humanity, it is also important to think about the possible negative effects of food assistance. The negative impacts include market distortions, for example freely available emergency food aid has been responsible for reducing the demand for local crops. I call for a more cautious approach from governments in the affected countries to ensure that emergency food aid brings the desired benefits, without compromising the domestic food production and market. My fear is that the long-term provision of food aid to people in need of assistance could create a dependency syndrome. In response to the looming food insecurity situation, I propose that the assistance be channeled through cash transfer, as it will generate a range of indirect benefits to beneficiaries and local economies. Countries in the West Africa region should rethink border restrictions in order to allow the flow of food in the region and at the same time increase surveillance on possible infectious cases.

I recently attended the WMO Conference on the Gender Dimensions of Weather and Climate Services in Geneva. The topic is one that brings together a lot of the work we do in HURDL, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this event. Specifically, I presented on how the development-as-usual approach to thinking about gender as essential instead of intersectional can make a tremendous difference in how we understand the presumed end users of climate services.

What does this mean? Basically, typical approaches to gender in adaptation tend to do three things:

1) They assume that gender differences are principal determinants of vulnerability to weather and climate shocks and stresses

2) They assume that men and women are unitary categories – that is, they do not generally look for the differences among men and among women, but focus on the differences between men and between women.

3) They assume that women are subservient or otherwise lacking authority and power relative to men, and this produces unique vulnerabilities for men and women.

Of course, anyone who has spent some time in an agrarian or pastoralist community in the Global South already knows that this is a gross oversimplification of gender roles and responsibilities in any setting. The categories “man” and “woman” contain a lot of variation, and that variation shapes the different roles and responsibilities individuals have in the community.

When I argue that gender is intersectional, what I am saying is that who an individual is, in terms of his or her role and responsibilities, is generally shaped in reference to a particular activity or setting. For example, a woman’s roles and responsibilities might be defined one way when talking about domestic labor, and perhaps another when talking about her agricultural activities. This means her identity is situational. Depending on her situation, it could be that her agricultural roles and responsibilities emerge at the intersection of gender and caste, while her domestic roles and responsibilities take shape at the intersection of gender and age.

Thus, talking about “women’s work” in this hypothetical community means different things in different situations. Really, we are talking about the difference between “high caste women’s work” and “low caste women’s work” in agriculture, and “senior women’s work” and “junior women’s work” in domestic contexts. These categories are not the same, for not all senior women will be high caste, and not all junior women will be low caste. Therefore, gender is only one part of the identity that defines particular roles and responsibilities within this community.

This all matters for adaptation and climate services because roles and responsibilities define who does what work, and therefore whose activities are vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change. Therefore, when thinking about how climate services might help particular populations address the impacts of climate variability and change, we must clearly define how that service will affect a particular activity’s vulnerability to a particular shock or stressor. We cannot say that a climate service will address a community’s vulnerability to climate variability and change – this is too broad to be meaningful. We need to talk about how a climate service might address the vulnerability of a community’s agricultural production to climate variability. This defines the activity in question clearly, and allows us to define the potential users of this activity appropriately – in the case of our hypothetical community, we would look to the roles and responsibilities that emerge at the intersection of gender and caste, as these identities are those that shape individual’s agricultural activities and therefore their vulnerabilities relevant to this particular stressor.

My closing point caused a bit of consternation (I can’t help it – it’s what I do). Basically, I asked the room if the point of paying attention to gender in climate services was to identify the particular needs of men and women, or to identify and address the needs of the most vulnerable. I argued that approaches to gender that treat the categories “man” and “women” as homogenous and essentially linked to particular vulnerabilities might achieve the former, but would do very little to achieve the latter. Mary Thompson and I have produced a study for USAID that illustrates this point empirically. But there were a number of people in the room that got a bit worked up by this point. They felt that I was arguing that gender no longer mattered, and that my presentation marked a retreat from years of work that they and others had put in to get gender to the table in discussions of adaptation and climate services. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are able to ask the sorts of complex questions that mark my ongoing work on gender, adaptation, and development (see, for example, my work on gendered crops, gendered livelihoods, and thereimagination of livelihoods decision-making) because a whole lot of pioneering researchers, many if not most of them women, pushed the very issue of gender onto the table. The work that I have been doing, and the ideas I outlined above, presented at the WMO, and are becoming part of the wider literature on gender and adaptation (see this overview piece) stand on the shoulders of these scholars, complementing and extending their work. I argue that HURDL’s work on gender and adaptation, and gender and climate services, is a logical extension of feminist work in development – feminist theory long ago stopped focusing merely on women, instead shifting to a wider focus on identity more generally. Gender usually matters a great deal when we talk about adaptation and development (though not always – see the Malawi case study in our USAID report). The question is how it matters, and how this particular aspect of identity produces opportunities and challenges we must address as we move forward in the Anthropocene.

In recent issues of Agriculture and Human Values the issue of genetically modified crops has come to the fore. It is heartening to see discussion on the role of GMOs in agriculture and food security in a forum that has been traditionally dominated by anti-GMO, anti non organic agriculture sentiments ( A camp to which I firmly belonged because of my allegiance to small scale farmers and, I admit to it, the general feeling in my gut that GMOs are unsafe for me). The arguments against GMOs are well known. Without completely rehashing these, one set of arguments stem from research showing the link of GMO use and associated loss of power and autonomy for small scale farmers in relation to rights to save seed and control harvests, and potentially negative impacts on local genetic diversity and the environment. Other arguments of course rely on the assumed (and perhaps somewhat deserved) must-make-profits- at-all costs nature of biotech companies at the expense of farmers and the over-claiming of potential benefits of GMOs. For advocates, GMOs increase yields, reduce the use of pesticides and improve drought and tolerance to the impacts related to climatic change (Interestingly, health has actually been the basis of several African governments to ban GMOs rather than more valid concerns about small scale farmers). In sub-Saharan Africa, debates on GMOs have been particularly virulent and divided with advocates constructing opponents as backward zealous simpletons at best and mass starvationists at worst. Opponents have sort to portray advocates as GMO company cronies with a hidden agenda.

But the arguments by both pro and anti GMO advocates are actually not supported by sufficient research in the African context. Yes, scientists have often cited increased yields or drought tolerance as key attributes for accepting GMOs. And in this regard, they are one up on anti GMO advocates. But farmers rarely actually make agricultural decisions by isolating one particular factor. Yields or drought tolerance would only be one of the considerations in a milieu of social, economic and taste considerations. Studies which only site yields, for instance, do not tell us much about what happens or impacts in real contexts.

Which brings me back to the recent literature in Ag and Human Values. While not related to research in the African context, they nonetheless offer us an interesting array of methodologies to go about in collecting the data needed to really find out the potential impacts of GMOs on African farmers. With regard to research which claims to represent the voice of small scale farmers, Stone and Flachs show how, within GMO studies, this research obscures, rather than explains, agricultural decision making. Studies which address the loss of autonomy in decision making in relation to GMOs and small farmers have to endeavor to understand the social context within which agricultural decisions are made, and must address opinions about technologies and practices related to GMOs with regard to long term impacts. Although the overall tone for their article is anti GMO, Schnurr and Mujabi-Mujuzi encourage researchers to reevaluate the idea that it is not possible to communicate the complexities of biotechnologies to farmers. I agree with Schnurr and Mujuzi on this point and extend it to African consumers. If the public and farmers don’t understand bio- tech, it is due to the failure of scientists not of the public. Don Lotter’s ( a former organic only ag supporter) article on food security in Africa sums it up for me. He notes that there is a need to find out how to use both agrochemicals and organic methods -and I would add GMOs – together. This is particularly true given the multiple challenges to African agriculture and particularly the added challenges presented by climate change.

As a former hardcore organic agriculture supporter I and others like me are now on the fence about GMOs, agriculture, food security and small scale producer autonomy in the African context and its a good thing.

References

Lotter Don. 2014. Facing food insecurity in Africa: Why, after 30 years of work in organic agriculture, I am promoting the use of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides in small-scale staple crop production. Agriculture and Human Values: DOI 10.1007/s10460-014-9547-x

I started writing this blog because I noticed mitigation is conspicuously hard to find when reading about resilience. Climate change resilience is often used in tandem and sometimes interchangeably with the term ‘adaptation’. Examples of climate change resilience here, here and here, highlight that the roots of resilience to climate change stem from disaster risk reduction, ecology and sociology and usually suggest a concept of “bouncing back” or “recovery” from some shock or stress. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Working Group (WG) II Contribution to its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), defined resilience as “the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity of self-organization, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.” This definition raises the question: why is a strategy (i.e. mitigation) that seeks to reduce the “stress” of greenhouse gases on the earth’s atmosphere not considered a form of resilience?

Is the reason mitigation has not emerged a popular strategy for building climate change resilience because the earth has not been able to retain its basic structure and function in absorbing greenhouse gases and so can basically never “bounce back” or “return to a former state”(based on the IPCC WG II AR4 definition of resilience)? Or perhaps because resilience has been a more popular term in the disaster risk reduction sector (which is characterized by more violent and extreme events), resilience has come to be framed more normatively in relation to the immediate and extreme impacts of climate change. Is this framing, the reason resilience is commonly applied in light of adaptation alone – as adaptation is a more immediate actionable strategy than mitigation? If so, within climate change issues which suffer from the back burner-effect already (see this blog post), mitigation then becomes the action that gets relegated to the background.

My problem with mitigation not being integral to the definition of climate change resilience, is that language matters. Since the concept of mitigation is not apparent in a number of definitions and conceptualizations of climate change resilience, it seems that so far, mitigation actions are being entirely left out of some of the efforts to build resilience to climate change. Nevertheless, the IPCC in the SPM of its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation stated that “…adaptation and mitigation can (emphasis mine) complement each other and together can significantly reduce the risks of climate change.” Can? I would like to think should! Granted, mitigation was not the focus of the report (as the authors so graciously point out) but the example advances the notion that mitigation has not necessarily been viewed by scholars and practitioners as an ultimate compliment to adaptation efforts in building resilience to climate change.

However there appears to be hope. In the most recent IPCC Assessment Report (AR5), the WG II Contribution in its SPM discusses the concept of climate-resilient pathways, which it defines as “sustainable-development trajectories that combine adaptation and mitigation to reduce climate change and its impacts.” Could a concept described as resilient that combines both adaptation and mitigation be an indication that mitigation is beginning to enter the conversation about resilience? I would like to think yes!

The death and destruction left in the wake of the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010 was extraordinary. More than 200,000 people died and the financial damage exceeded 120% of Haiti’s 2009 GDP. After the immediate search-and-rescue activities, humanitarian agencies, alongside the Haitian people and government, turned their attention not merely to getting life back to normal, but to the goal of ‘building back better.’ Billions of dollars and extraordinary human capital poured into Haiti, yet during the recovery process a vital factor to ‘building back better’ was often overlooked: environmental sustainability (ES).

The Barriers to Environmental Sustainability in Post-Disaster Settings

My research (available here) sought to understand the barriers to ES in post-disaster settings. Using transitional shelter implementation in Haiti as a proxy, I examined how humanitarian actors considered ES, and the barriers they faced to incorporating environmental concerns into operations. Data demonstrated that in post-disaster settings there is a low prioritization of, but growing interest in, ES. In Haiti, as a result of the barriers outlined below, the inclusion of ES was sporadic and inconsistent. These barriers can be broken down into two categories:

The humanitarian sector is slow to adapt to new practices and technologies; and

Pre-positioning and pre-planning are logistically difficult.

These barriers are reinforcing and deeply interrelated. For example, in Haiti, if it were perceived that ES required trade-offs in speed or costs – a common but ultimately disproven perception – ES would generally not be pursued. Moreover, in the balancing act between rapid response and comprehensive planning, an emphasis on speed tends to persist past the search-and-rescue phase and into the mid- and long-term recovery. The emphasis on speed is driven by the unique pressures of operating in a post-disaster setting (e.g., media and donor scrutiny).

Even if humanitarian actors wanted to pursue ES, structural, organizational, and logistical barriers impeded implementation. In addition to a lack of clarity regarding who was ultimately responsible for taking the lead on environmental programming, the fact remains that there were limited actors with sufficient expertise in both the environment and disaster recovery to lead the effort. That is, even if ES was considered a paramount concern, there were significant human capital challenges that would have impeded their efforts. As a result of the totality of these barriers, in Haiti, ES ultimately came down to the capacity and motivation of specific implementing agencies, many of which were already overwhelmed with the complex operations one would expect after such an extreme event.

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Resilience

While asking the humanitarian sector to consider the environment might strike some as beyond the humanitarian imperative – to save lives and reduce suffering – this ignores three critical points: 1) with the right expertise and proper planning, considering the environment will not interrupt the mid- and long-term humanitarian response; 2) proper environmental management will help bridge the gap from emergency response to long-term redevelopment; and 3) in the mid- and long-term recovery, ignoring the environment can expose new vulnerabilities or exacerbate old ones. As such, ES must be embraced as a goal – or more accurately, a tool – of the humanitarian sector. Conversely, disaster response efforts that do not incorporate ES risk hindering long-term recovery efforts, and thus, disaster resilience.

Author’s Note – Two points of clarification: First, the environment in this instance refers to local, acute issues – particularly those around the impact site (e.g., increased risk of landslides due to improper material extraction). This is not about global environmental issues (e.g., climate change). Second, this analysis focuses on the mid- to long-term recovery and not search-and-rescue or emergency operations. To paraphrase a research participant, I am not suggesting ‘we hug a tree before we hug a baby.’ I operationalized a definition for post-disaster sustainability as “Sustainable post-disaster activities provide resources to affected citizens to ensure health and safety and to promote redevelopment, without causing further damage to land or existing structures, exacerbating the impacts of the disaster, or placing undue stress on the natural environment.

Every once in a while I am asked a very troubling question: “Do you believe in climate change?” The phrasing “do you believe in” or any variation thereof feels like ice water being injected my spine. It demonstrates that the conservation community has all but botched the trial on climate change. If this were a criminal case, we provided means, motive, and intent, but couldn’t counter the defense’s wordplay, trickery, and jargon-laden half-truths.

Manifestations of this loss keep coming up. A few weeks ago I visited some old friends. Over a cocktail (or two), climate change worked its way into the conversation. Though not climate deniers per se, they fall somewhere in the skeptical-to-unconcerned range on the alarmist-to-denier continuum. And they are skeptical because, like most Americans, they don’t have time to fact-check the barrage of climate-related information they hear from myriad sources, including some that suggest climate change is not affected by human activity. These hard-to-check impressive sounding “facts” are the simultaneous danger and strength of climate denier’s misinformation campaign; they somehow transform scientific evidence into a viewpoint in a political debate. For those interested in forestalling serious climate legislation, a politicized hung jury in an increasingly partisan society is exactly what a win looks like. But, moral high ground or not, this is as much on those of us who see climate change as a major challenge as it is on those who argue against action or its existence.

Worse, the combined politicization and evident reality of climate change is a double-edged sword. Those who deny climate change have perverse disincentives to back away from their intransigence. They are in a corner: continue to deny humanity’s most pressing challenge or walk away from the denial discourse and face serious political ramifications in terms of their own legitimacy. It’s a nasty paradox. The scientific community and its political allies have, contrary to Sun Tzu’s advice, left our “enemy” no way of escape.

Take, for example, Marco Rubio – an outsized voiced in the Republican Party. When Rubio simultaneously denied climate change and announced his interest in the presidency my reaction was predictably visceral. Yet despite a driving temptation to lash out over his ignorance/delusion/lack of integrity, I no longer think vilification of deniers helps the climate discourse. Particularly whenever it takes the form of left vs. right. Whether he runs for President or remains a Senator, Rubio could face extraordinary political backlash and de-legitimization should the Republican Party suddenly start to embrace the science of climate change. This is why I believe the Republican Party has shifted from accepting the reality of climate change (see President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union) to the evolving party line of “La La La I can’t hear you” or “I’m no expert, but [insert economic platitude].”

Trapping our “enemies” in a particular corner of the climate change debate, and allowing the resultant discourse to be viewed as a left-right issue, has presented us with a deadlock that inhibits further progress. Maybe its time we stop fighting dogma with logic and politics with science. These are flawed strategies; it is asymmetrical warfare. Converting climate deniers is not an issue of showing them the science – we have done that. It has failed. It continues to fail. What we must do is find a graceful way out for the climate skeptics that we – I, for sure – have so long vilified. This is not to suggest we should let up on correcting the widespread dissemination of misinformation (John Oliver’s piece on this is perfect, if you haven’t watched it, do it now.). Only that accidental or intentional vilification offers little to the cause.

Our focus need be dispassionate advancement of meaningful climate change policy. We need to change the conversation and demonstrate the big Truth of climate change legislation: that it appeals to conservative ideals, even if not certain right-leaning constituents. This needs to be made more explicit. The Republican Party prides itself as responsible, long-term planners (see the budget discourse), yet are unconcerned about the widespread economic effects of climate change? Or the myriad impacts on impacts on national security outlined here? It just doesn’t add up.

So here is my proposition to those who recognize the importance of climate change but have been painted into a political corner: tell the conservation community what you need to advance meaningful policy without sacrificing your ideals, and yes, political ambitions. I am done shouting and am very ready to listen. Or to put it in the [cleaned up] words of one of an old baseball coach, “lead, follow, or get the [heck] out the way.”